Use of modern technologies and software to deliver efficient design and optimization of 1380 km long bipole III ±500 kV HVDC transmission line, Manitoba, Canada

Abstract

The new ±500 kV HVDC Bipole III line is one of the longest transmission lines to be built in North America. It will connect the generation source on the Nelson River in Northern Manitoba with the load centre located near Winnipeg in the South. Modern technologies have been used for designing and optimization this line such as: the use of LiDAR survey which provided accurate time/cost efficient non invasive survey of the line corridor, use of Reliability Based Design (RBD) method that provides more cost efficiency and higher reliability than common deterministic methods, use of modern software that allows a extremely efficient import of LiDAR survey data and creation of line profiles for tower spotting. The same software was also used to select the family of towers to be designed and for tower spotting that results in the minimum line cost.